6.0.1

Host Configuration for vMotion
Before using vMotion, you must congure your hosts correctly.
Ensure that you have correctly congured your hosts.
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Each host must be correctly licensed for vMotion.
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Each host must meet shared storage requirements for vMotion.
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Each host must meet the networking requirements for vMotion.
I The ESXi rewall in ESXi 5.0 and later does not allow per-network ltering of vMotion
trac. Therefore, you must apply rules on your external rewall to ensure that no incoming
connections can be made to the vMotion socket on TCP port 8000.
vMotion Across Long Distances
You can perform reliable migrations between hosts and sites that are separated by high network round-trip
latency times. vMotion across long distances is enabled when the appropriate license is installed. No user
conguration is necessary.
For long-distance migration, verify the network latency between the hosts and your license.
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The round-trip time between the hosts must be up to 150 milliseconds.
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Your license must cover vMotion across long distances.
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You must place the trac related to virtual machine les transfer to the destination host on the
provisioning TCP/IP stack. See “Place Trac for Cold Migration, Cloning, and Snapshots on the
Provisioning TCP/IP Stack,” on page 143.
vMotion Shared Storage Requirements
Congure hosts for vMotion with shared storage to ensure that virtual machines are accessible to both
source and target hosts.
During a migration with vMotion, the migrating virtual machine must be on storage accessible to both the
source and target hosts. Ensure that the hosts congured for vMotion use shared storage. Shared storage can
be on a Fibre Channel storage area network (SAN), or can be implemented using iSCSI and NAS.
If you use vMotion to migrate virtual machines with raw device mapping (RDM) les, make sure to
maintain consistent LUN IDs for RDMs across all participating hosts.
See the vSphere Storage documentation for information on SANs and RDMs.
vSphere vMotion Networking Requirements
Migration with vMotion requires correctly congured network interfaces on source and target hosts.
Congure each host with at least one network interface for vMotion trac. To ensure secure data transfer,
the vMotion network must be a secure network, accessible only to trusted parties. Additional bandwidth
signicantly improves vMotion performance. When you migrate a virtual machine with vMotion without
using shared storage, the contents of the virtual disk is transferred over the network as well.
N vMotion network trac is not encrypted. You should provision secure private networks for use by
vMotion only.
Chapter 13 Migrating Virtual Machines
VMware, Inc. 121